Page 21 of Good Vampires Go to Heaven

“Ermine, shermine! Enough with the fur crap, Grimey,” Beau shot back.

“With everything else we’ve done . . . like escape from Horror with a prized prisoner . . . I doubt that Jasper is going to fixate on a mangy fur,” Regina said with disgust, helping to cover his nude body once again. Otherwise, the jerk wouldn’t have to be worrying about barbed wire. His you-know-what would freeze and drop off. Actually, that might not be a bad idea.

“Hah! You don’t know Jasper.” Zeb was still talking about the fur cloak.

The balloon was getting closer and closer to the ground, probably only a hundred feet up now, and decisions needed to be made. Zeb seemed to realize that, too. Shivering, he wrapped the cloak tight around himself, then surveyed the land they were crossing.

“Aim for that flattened area over there,” he directed Patience.

“How do I aim?” Patience asked.

With a sound of disgust, Zeb took over and they made a relatively smooth landing where the basket did, in fact, tip over on its side, and he was, in fact, on top, facing upward so that his barbed parts weren’t pressed against anyone. When they all alighted, they didn’t think to grab onto the landing ropes and the balloon began to rise out of reach.

Oh, well!

Zeb lowered his cloak so that he could stand in his bare feet on the fur and not the icy ground. The temperature was cold for all of them, who shivered uncontrollably but more so for the nude Zeb. In fact, he was turning a pretty shade of blue.

“Do you still think you’re unable to teletransport?” Regina asked Zeb.

He seemed to be attempting a silent transport, then shook his head. “No go!”

“Let’s all gather around Zeb, team huddle style, and try to teletransport out of here. Zeb, you concentrate on where you want us to go. No, don’t even think of sending us there. You’d be with us, anyhow.”

Thus it was that four witches joined arms, surrounding a high demon Lucipire and after what seemed like an hour, but was only a minute, began to swirl up into the sky. Already, the air felt warmer in the currents of teletransporting. Then the swirling reversed and they were spinning downward.

Zeb gasped out, “The first thing I’m going to do is find me a pair of wire cutters.”

“At this point, I could do it with my teeth,” Regina joked.

But Zeb turned inch by inch to look at her. “Really?”

Honestly! Men and their manparts! Regina made one last suggestion, “Maybe we should pray first, for the success of our mission.”

“We’re demons,” Beau pointed out. “We don’t know how to pray.”

Patience and Grimelda agreed with Beau. But, to Regina’s surprise, Zeb arched his brows at her and said, “Good idea.”

“But how?” Beau persisted.

“The words don’t matter,” Regina said. “Just the intent.”

Thus it was, as the five of them swirled round and round toward the approaching ground, one communal prayer could be heard. “HELP!”

Chapter 5

She was red hot, all right . . .

They landed face first on the shore of a small island whose narrow beach was more rock than sand. Bracing her arms, Regina raised her head and saw, to one side, beautiful turquoise blue waters, and in the other direction, up about a hundred feet, a cliffside, bamboo and banana-leaf-roofed dwelling, accessible only by a set of steep wooden stairs.

If it wasn’t Zeb’s “hidey-hole,” it was a close second. Paradise!

Four of them got clumsily to their feet, spitting out sand and pebbles and feeling their faces and bodies for bruises. One of them did not stand. Zeb was still unconscious, and thank God for that, since his barbed wire penis was beneath him. Besides that, the rough landing had probably opened more of his wounds.

“We have to get Zeb inside and take care of his injuries as soon as possible,” Regina said, taking command.

“Well, duh!” Beau was looking around, not very impressed. He had probably been expecting a more luxurious island, maybe one with a boat he could confiscate and ride off into the sunset.

“Good luck with that,” Patience said to Regina, staring pointedly at the high risers of the twenty-five or so steps. Patience ignored Beau altogether. She did that a lot, Regina noticed, when they weren’t sniping at each other. Probably due to years and years of forced close association.